Sunday, March 24, 2013

Park Gyu Oh/Chu-Seok (Korean thanks-giving day)/9:00 am

201101245 Park Gyu Oh

Korean people get fat in September. Of course, the reason why they get heavier is they eat a lot. Then what makes them eat a lot? It is a Chu-seok, Korean thanks giving day. It takes place on 15th of August on lunar calendar. A long time ago, the King Yu-Ri of Sin-ra dynasty told princesses to make women in their city weavehempclothes. It started from the someday on July when the full moon appeared, and it ended on August 15th. Winner sides were chosen by their score, and the other sides served the foods for them. This is the origin of chuseok. However these days, it is a celebration of good harvest. On chuseok, we eat a lot of Korean traditional foods, do some traditional activities, and have a memorialserviceforancestors.

Song-pyun, Jeon, beef-ribstew and Jap chae. These things are the korean traditional foods we usually eat on Chu-seok. Song-pyun is a kind of rice cake, but its shape resemble the half moon. People usually put some sugars and other bean jam fillings in it. Jeon is like a pancake, but it is not sweet. Kim-chi, pumpkins, pepper, sea foods, and etc. We put various kind of food on it. If we put Kim-chi on it, the name of that Jeon is Kim-chi Jeon. Jap chae is consist of mixeddishofboiledbeanthreads, stir-friedvegetables, andshreddedmeat. All these are very delicious and good for our health, so that is why people get fat after Chu-seok.

People do some traditional activities for fun and to express their grateful feelings. Ganggangsullae is one of the famous activity related to Chu-seok. It is like a group dance. People make a circle and grab each other's hands. Then they sing a song and turn around to anti-clockwise direction. People usually dress Korean traditional costume 'han-bok' while doing this. In the past, women are not allowed to going out in the night. Therefore Ganggangsullae was the rare opportunity to play with friends and the way of expressing their feelings. There are other famous activities like Ssireum(Korean wrestling), agameof yut and etc.

The most important part is Cha-r'ye. It is ancestral rite. People do this to remember their ancestors and to pay respect to them. First, they set the table for the ancestral rite. And then people carefully arrange the food on the table by traditional orders. When the all relatives gathered, they bowed twice to our ancestors. Most of the Christians skip this because it is against their religion. After the rite, they eat the food together.

These days, modern people usually do not farming and the tradition became modernized. People enjoy this holiday as their own way. We do not dance and if you are Christian, skip the rite. Some people just go to travel on this holiday. However, still, it is a precious day that makes whole big family meet each other and communicate with each other. People can modernized but they cannot forget their family.

2 comments:

1. What I like about this piece of writing is that you introduced various and specific examples related to Chuseok. I realized how many traditional activities were enjoyed in Chuseok, and all those foods you said are my favorites ;)

2. Your main topic seems to be Chuseok, Korean version of Thanksgiving Day.

3. Your first paragraph gave me an impression because you introduced the origin of Chuseok by going far back to Sinra Dynasty.

4. "We do not dance and if you are Christian, skip the rite." This sentence seems like you are suggesting us to skip the rite if we are Christian.

5. Your writing would be much better if there's no fragments like "Kim-chi, pumpkins, pepper, sea foods, and etc".

To Park gyu-oh from Ahn sang wook1. The topic of your writing is Chu-seok, the national holiday of Korea.2. The most interesting part for me is that you mentioned history which informed us of the origin of the holiday, Chu-seok. Even though I’m Korean, this is first time for me to hear about that. In my opinion, by presenting the history in the introduction, you can let readers read with curiosity and interesting.3. You specifically described the foods, writing how they look like, how to cook. Therefore, I think it is very easy for foreigners to understand about the traditional Korean holiday.4. Especially, you specifically provided what you are going to talk about following paragraphs in regular sequence. This is good! Overall, legibility of your writing is good! Thank you.